I'm four years old.
My mom
and I are
walking
along Gwalia Road in our wooded Kenilworth
neighborhood. I'm a
happychild,
frolicking along. I adore
my mom.
We're going to her
friend's house
where other
moms
are gathering for a morning tea. I'm proud to be
walking
with
my mom.
I'm excited to be
walking
with
my mom.
I'm
loving
holding
my mom's
hand. At
the house,
she introduces me to her
friends.
I
feelspecial with all the
attention
they lavish on me. The other
moms
talk calmly,
quietly,
and I wander around. There's a low table laden with tea things and nice
goodies to eat. On the side of the table is something I've never seen
before:

Watermelon Basket

It's a watermelon carved into the shape of a
basket. And it's filled with fruit: grapes, pineapple,
strawberries, and watermelon. My
eyesgetbig.
I
walk
over to it. My
littleheart
says "Ooh! Wow!". It looks so
beautiful.
I figure it will be great to carry it over to all the
moms
and offer them some fruit to eat. So I reach over and pick it up by
the handle, the same
way
you'd pick up any basket.

I'm smiling and
happy.
I'm excited to be a
big
boy offering the
moms
something to eat ... and at that very
moment
the handle breaks under the weight of the fruit, and the watermelon
basket crashes to the floor, bursting, sending pieces of
fruit and juice everywhere. The
momsstop
talking. It's a stony, icy, shocked silence. Every
eye
in the room is on me and the mess of fruit and juice and pieces of
exploded watermelon basket I'm now
standing
in on the floor.

I smile nervously, figuring they'd all realize it was an
accident
right?, and
praise
me instead for my
big
boy idea of
serving
them in the first place. That's not
what happens.
Not even close.

In what was once a calm,
quiet
room, all the
moms
are now running thisway
and thatway,
some with kitchen towels wiping juice from the floor and furniture,
others with plates picking up fruit chunks from everywhere. I'm
standing
in the middle of this sudden chaos, and no one is looking at me or
talking to me. It's like for them, I'm suddenly not here
anymore.

I see
my mom
talking with another
mom.
"Oh good!" I think, "she's explaining it was an
accident,
and things will be OK.". Wrong! That's also not
what happens.
She takes me by the hand (and this time it's not the same
loving
hand-holding it was when we frolicked on our
way
here: it's a tight grip, pulling me) and
walks
me out the door and home. She isn't
speaking
along
the way.
This mortifies me. Then she lets go of my hand and
walks
ahead of me. I follow, looking down,
feeling
terrible.

What I want in this
moment
is her approval / her
love.
And she's not giving me her approval. Instead she's
walking
ahead of me, not holding my hand, not
speaking.
I want her to make it right. I want her to tell me it's OK. None of
this
happens.
I'm deeply embarrassed. Even at this tender age, I understand I've let
her down. In this
moment,
I add on a
meaning
ie I
commit
myself to a
life sentence
of "She doesn't approve of me" which becomes
"the Truth"
for me - not only in
futureencounters
with
my mom
but also with everyone else with whom I interact. I seek approval
everywhere. But the
life sentence
I languish under, ensures I never find it anywhere.

This
conversation
teases out the possibility of telling
the truth
about the
life sentences
we impose on ourselves by adding on
meaning
then forgetting it's we who added on the
meaning
then living as if whatever
meaning
we added on is in fact
"the Truth".
Nothing I
made up
about
my mom
not approving of me / not
loving
me was
"the Truth".
Yes she was embarrassed by the mess I made (rightly so - so was I). But
her embarrassment didn't
stop
her
loving
me / approving of me. It was I who put that in
play,
with the result that any
love
she showed me was suspicious to me - even worse, any
loveanyone showed me became suspicious to me too.

Having isolated this added-on
meaning
for myself, I
shared
it with
my mom
thirty five years after the fact. I
sharedhow
it
got
in
the way
of me allowing her to show
love
for me ie that I was languishing under
"the Truth"
that she didn't approve of me. And
"the Truths"
we languish under, even if they're false ie especially if
they're false, become
real
for us. Isolating added-on
meaning,
causes
it to lose its grip, paving
the way
for free choices, new possibilities, fresh starts, and
wide openfutures.